This application claims priority to Korean Patent Application No. 2003-0066337 filed on Sep. 24, 2003 in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to disc drives, such as a HDD (hard disc drive) for example, and more particularly, to decelerating a head, after being accelerated in a disk drive, according to a desired deceleration profile for minimizing damage to the head.
2. Description of the Related Art
A (HDD) hard disc drive magnetically records data on or reproduces data from a rotating magnetic disc. The HDD is capable of accessing a large amount of data at high speed and thus has been frequently used as an auxiliary storage device of a computer system.
A latch system of a hard disc drive protects a disc and a head from external impact when the head is not floating over the disc. In general, such a latch system is classified into a magnetic type, an electromagnetic type, and a lamp loading type.
The magnetic type latch system is easy to operate, and thus, its use is popular. This system fixes a head in a parking zone using magnetic force when the head is not floating over a data area of a disc. An actuator within the HDD has the head mounted thereon, and the actuator is moved when current is applied to a voice coil motor (VCM). The actuator is thus moved for accelerating the head to a position over the disc after being unlatched.
If servo information is not read from a disc during such unlatching of the head, the unlatching process is stopped and the head is returned to the parking zone. However, since the head is moving over the data area at a very high speed after unlatching, large currents must be applied to the VCM so as to return the head to the parking zone away from the data area. Such high currents cause a high speed of the head during parking which may cause the head to be physically damaged.
Thus, the actuator and the head mounted thereon are desired to be decelerated for parking the head with minimized damage to the head.